10 ms·

America's shoplifting problem, explained by retail workers and thieves

48 points by cainxinth 3y ago

progne 3y ago
Tolerating shoplifting is burning the furniture to keep warm, eating the seeds for the next crop. Stores close, jobs flee, food and medicine deserts grow. Whatever desperation drives people to shoplift, amplifies. I'm watching it happen in real time in my nearest big city. It's a huge slow motion train wreck crushing the people who need help most. To help them we need to be less tolerant of such petty crime, more in proportion to the damage that it does.
- philipov 3y ago
  To help them, we need to be less tolerant of the white collar crime perpetrated by the employers in our country.
  - orochimaaru 3y ago
    How would targeting white collar crime prevent the closure of stores because of safety concerns and store losses? White collar crime needs to be prosecuted. But that won’t help here.
    - xattt 3y ago
      Targeting white collar crime opens up resources for helping the rest of society.
      - orochimaaru 3y ago
        Nope. It doesn’t. Probably goes to a fund managed by the agency that initiated the prosecution. I don’t think any marginalized community sees a single dime out of any white collar crime prosecution.
    - mxkopy 3y ago
      I don't know if you classify misappropriation of government funds, grift, and politically motivated administrative decisions as white collar crime, but that sort of stuff is a large part of the reason for why this sort of thing is culturally acceptable. The Kids for Cash scandal, I think, serves as a good example for why so many people feel disenfranchised - and it's an example of someone with authority in the system getting caught, imagine how many don't.
      - vorpalhex 3y ago
        I don't think 15 year old kids in Chicago are stealing clothes and shoes because of an insider corruption scheme impacting Pennsylvania almost two decades ago.
        orochimaaru 3y ago
        You forgot to add electronics and video games here. I’m sure those fall under the necessities criteria for teenagers these days. A lot of the crime isn’t just necessities. It’s basically stealing to sell on the side.
        pc86 3y ago
        Absolutely, but the majority of people who are doing that are doing it to buy food and other necessities (or, a step or two removed, to buy drugs to try to sell but for the same end goal - a better life for them and theirs). Yes there are exceptions of course but the people stealing things from Target and CVS are not selling those things to pay for their Mercedes. They're selling them to pay for basic necessities. That doesn't mean it's not a crime, and it shouldn't be punished, but it is a distinction worth noting.
        vorpalhex 3y ago
        Overwhelmingly shoplifters are white kids with substance abuse problems. They are feeding drug/alcohol problems, not feeding their family. The vast majority of the poor in the US are.. obese. Not fat, but clinically obese. For whatever failings we have, feeding the poor and the masses is not one of them. Typically when kids do "go hungry" they are Middleschoolers or younger with... abusive parents. (Which is why free lunch programs work, it bypasses shitty parents).
    - marginalia_nu 3y ago
      White collar crime is part of the engine that creates the poverty that has people shoplifting in the first place. Between the subprime mortgage crisis and hooking 50 million people on OxyContin, this shit really takes a bite out of people's savings.
    - floren 3y ago
      It comes up in every crime discussion -- a poster runs in to point out that actually, wage theft is worse than someone beating and robbing your elderly grandmother.
      - justrealist 3y ago
        They also have to torture the numbers to make the case that it's comparable. The "wage theft" numbers they cite include like, some defense subcontractor suing Lockheed Martin for unpaid hours. It's important that it doesn't happen, but it's just a different order of magnitude of damage for the people sensitive to it.
      - somehnguy 3y ago
        I’ve never seen anyone compare wage theft to violent crime like you’re implying. It’s usually in the context that wage theft is a much larger problem than people realize - to the point that depending on which source you choose it’s either on par or larger than other forms of theft.
        floren 3y ago
        Searching the archives for "wage theft" turns up examples pretty trivially, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37703395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37703395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37751850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37751850 You're right that they're not saying "wage theft is worse than murder", just "wage theft is worse than all other forms of theft"
        somehnguy 3y ago
        I don’t see any references to physically harming people in your examples. I also don’t believe anyone is implying violent crime when comparing to other types of theft.
        Paul-Craft 3y ago
        I don't get where you're getting "on par" from. Literally the only year that other forms of theft have exceeded or even come close to wage theft was the year Bernie Madoff got convicted. That's just an accounting artifact.
  - owlstuffing 3y ago
    The two are not mutually exclusive.
  - arijun 3y ago
    To me this sounds like a “no u” argument. Whataboutism doesn’t address the op’s claim that shoplifting reduces access to stores for those who really need it.
- Spivak 3y ago
  > To help them we need to be less tolerant of such petty crime ??? Petty crime by any reasonable definition is an inferior good, above a (not actually all that large) income people stop doing it. It's not entirely clear how punishing it harder is actually going to help until you actually help the truly desperate. Now, once you do and the only people left shoplifting have no claim to any kind of "well I had to because I couldn't afford <necessity>" then you can bring the wrath of god down on it.
  - stewx 3y ago
    No one has to steal, and it's insulting to honorable low-income people to claim otherwise.
    - feintruled 3y ago
      You sure the social safety net is that good?
      - throwawa14223 3y ago
        No safety net is require to say stealing is immoral.
        feintruled 3y ago
        I didn't mention the morality of it. The statement was 'no one HAS to steal' so I was taking it as a statement that no-one will starve without stealing which must surely be a comment on the social safety net. My three assumptions here are that some people are starving, stealing to eat is the canonical excusable crime, and that 'just get a job' is not a solution. If you disagree with any of those, then that's your opinion but we have nothing further to discuss as we start from a different premise.
        throwawa14223 3y ago
        >stealing to eat is the canonical excusable crime You're absolutely correct, we disagree on premises about the world. Have a wonderful day, I'm sorry for what amounts to a nonsensical response on my part.
- justrealist 3y ago
  It's not desperation! It's organized crime reselling on Amazon and Ebay! Target is't losing money because people are stealing gallons of milk they actually consume, it's because organized gangs empty the entire shelf of laundry detergent and flip it online. The romanticism here is ridiculous.
  - idiotsecant 3y ago
    Happy, well adjusted people don't form organized shoplifting gangs. You do that when you fall down the rabbit hole of not having other options. If we do our job of educating and providing very basic social services and opportunities for young people it turns out that crime rates get lower and we get to harness the collective human potential of a generation instead of paying to lock them up. Unfortunately we have to rely on the better nature and responsible long term planning abilities of humans to get this done. One human might be able to stick to a plan that becomes impossible for 5.
    - justrealist 3y ago
      > Happy, well adjusted people don't form organized shoplifting gangs Happy and well adjusted people form shoplifting gangs with the risk/reward calculus says that they can make a lot of money with 0 risk! "Don't shoplift" is not some innate ethical virtue that humans adopt when they are happy and healthy; by trying to lean on virtues without maintaining a system for enforcing them you are simply spending down unquantifiable social capital in order to avoid making hard decisions.
      - idiotsecant 3y ago
        I think you're wrong. Most people aren't kept from stealing because they're afraid they'll get in trouble. They are kept from stealing by an innate sense of social fairness. If you meet a man on the road in the middle of a remote forest in which you cannot possibly be observed do you murder him and take his things or not? If not, why not?
        3y ago
- gustavus 3y ago
  > Whatever desperation drives people to shoplift, amplifies. We need to keep in mind most of this shoplifting is not out of desperation or people needing things in most cases. Despite what people like to complain the US does have some social programs and beyond that almost every major city I've been in has multiple food banks and other organizations that help with people in extreme need. I'm not saying they are perfectly adequate, and I'm not trying to be scroogesque by saying "are there not workhouses or prisons?", merely to point out that first off there are lots of people that are desperate that don't turn to retail theft. In order to frame the real root of the problem. It's organized crime. Here's how the scam works, there are various drug addicts, they will do anything for their next fix, they are the ones performing the actual theft. They then sell what they steal to the middle managers who will give them money or drugs for the merchandise. The middle managers then turn around and deliver it to what I'll call "HQ" which then turns around and sales it online, and they are able to underbid their competitors by virtue of having very low operating costs. There was a wonderful article about how this scam was being run with a baby food ring operating out of Florida, but it is a similar story in multiple areas. I put this out there to disabuse some people of the seemingly naive notion that these poor shoplifters are noble "Jean ValJean" types trying to steal bread to feed their family, and the truth that many of them, although held captive in the throes of addiction and mental health crises, are cogs in a machine of organized crime which although viewed microscopically doesn't seem like a big deal, when expanded up cause true societal destabilization.
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    Yes. I would guess that most drug dealers take more payments in stolen merch than they do in cold, hard cash.
- drewcoo 3y ago
  If people are burning the furniture to keep warm, cracking down more harshly on furniture burning probably doesn't make the people less desperate for heat to live. If people are desperate enough to eat the seed they know they need for the next crop, policing seed use more strictly won't make the people less desperate for food. In fact, it probably makes them more desperate. Why would you think being less tolerant of shoplifting would make the people less desperate?
- WalterBright 3y ago
  > Whatever desperation drives people to shoplift That assumes they are desperate, and not just find it easier to steal than to work.
  - scoofy 3y ago
    It’s a two tiered system. I live in SF, and when I see a man grab a rack of jackets at target and walk out, it’s obvious the act of a desperate and drug addled individual. When I see an efficient group of people in a Lexus breaking into cars or luxury stores, or the groups reselling fenced merchandise on 24th and Mission, it’s obviously organized crime. The one fuels the other. There’s little reason for a desperate man to steal 10 jackets (he only needs one or two), unless there is a fence willing to buy them. There’s little reason for organized crime to break into cars or shops when others are willing to do that work for them, they can focus on selling the goods on Facebook Marketplace or eBay.
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    The truth is weirder than that. In sections of society it is frowned upon to have paid employment. It is seen as being a loser. A decent percentage of shoplifting is done by those with drug addictions, but a bigger percentage is done by those who are not desperate or in need, but simply because it is seen as the respectable way to earn money. Source: I am a criminal and have spent a serious portion of my adult life in custody
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      Thanks for the frankness. I went to Caltech, perhaps the university with the most extensive honor system. It was wonderful. I never had to watch my back, or lock my dorm room door. The rest of the students liked it, too, and we watched out for each other. I don't know of any student who stole, but surely it did happen. Their fellow students would turn them in and ostracize them, so they usually just disappeared. It's the way I want to live. I've tried to use that in my life ever since. Sometimes, I get taken advantage of. But usually, I've found that people reciprocate, and it's nice. The D Language Foundation is run that way. We like it. (In contrast, a friend of mine attended a different university. His second day, his dorm room was looted clean.)
- trinsic2 3y ago
  I agree. And, we need to be more aware and action orientated towards our judicial systems to enforce the law and making sure people get treatment/help. I think this should probably start with our police and judicial systems
- ip26 3y ago
  Just a few weeks ago, NPR did a segment on how reducing traffic enforcement (because it disproportionately impacts minorities and the poor) has significantly increased the number of people hit and killed by cars… mostly minorities and the poor.
Ajay-p 3y ago
I am sympathetic to a person stealing food or clothing but not iPhones and consumer products, but theft appears unsustainable for retailers. What is the answer to this problem? Options are: a. More prosecutions and stronger enforcement of existing laws; b. Greater security within the store environment; or c. Closing the stores in areas with high crime. The last option would not be productive for the community. Option B has its limitations such as profiling, potential hostile encounters, and civil liability for America retailers. I do not know what it was like for shoplifters a decade ago but one person has told me it was more stringent. Shoplifters were prosecuted and punished, therefore it is possible that the only solution is greater enforcement of the law, and aggressive prosecutions.
- tasty_freeze 3y ago
  Don't take this as me defending the shoplifters, but I don't think the smash-and-grab iphone thieves are doing it because they want dozens of phones. They are fencing them and use the money, which can buy food (and of course anything else).
  - vharuck 3y ago
    This matches my brief experience. When I worked at a Lowe's store, which was a big target for serial shoplifters, the security staff said the process usually went like this: 1. Steal a small but expensive item, usually by hiding it in another item's box (return the big one later for a refund). 2. Return the stolen item at a different Lowe's, or even Home Depot. Without a receipt, you'll get a gift card with the item's value. 3. Sell the gift card at a discount, either online or to somebody in the parking lot. I don't remember any problems with people stealing the basic things every good toolset should have, like hammers or drills. It was a lot of drill bits and attachments.
  - vorpalhex 3y ago
    Mostly drugs and alcohol. There is huge overlap between shoplifting and substance abuse. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4104590/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4104590/
  - 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
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impostervt 3y ago
My local grocery store chain (Giant) recently closed off 1 of the two main openings to every store, and the self-checkout is now very annoying about "put the item in the bagging area". All of their solutions seem to be very anti-consumer, to the point where I now use instacart instead of going myself. I've also started ordering from a different grocery store. I wish they'd just hire an off-duty police officer some of the time.
- CivBase 3y ago
  Better yet they could hire cashiers. When self-checkout stations were introduced at my local grocier, they were a convenient way to checkout fast when you only had a few simple items. It was always a user-hostile experience, but it wasn't a big deal when you only had a few items. Now there are so few cashiers ever available that I'm regularly forced to use self checkout with a few dozen items. And the experience has only gotten worse.
- nfriedly 3y ago
  > I wish they'd just hire an off-duty police officer some of the time. Same, but that's expensive and these stores often operate on very thin margins. I worked at a k-mart when I was a teenager, 20-something years ago. The store had a problem with shoplifting and did hire a security guy to come in. He got some arrests for "petty" shoplifting, but it took something like a year to nail the big one. It turned out that the employee who had installed the cameras had been doing a ton of shoplifting. They eventually caught him because he made a mistake and did something on-camera. That solved the shoplifting problem, but the security guy probably cost more than they saved. At any rate, the store closed down a year or two later.
  - sixothree 3y ago
    If the expense of hiring a few employees is greater than the cost of the loss from theft, then how big of a problem is this really?
ObnoxiousProxy 3y ago
Truthfully, the proliferation of crimes like this is a pre-condition of systems collapse because it slowly unravels a lawful society. Laws that are not enforced are useless, and behaviour like this would eventually permeate into mainstream culture. After all, why should I pay if others can steal without consequences? Not to mention the negative socioeconomic impacts others have already pointed out of forcing store closures or driving up costs which eventually just feed the loop. Whether or not one is sympathetic towards the people practicing this, the key issue that is becoming apparent is increasing apathy towards basic civilizational social contracts. This will be bad for everyone in the long term.
- reidjs 3y ago
  Agree that it's bad people steal, but disagree that petty theft will slowly cause the collapse of our modern lawful society.
  - pc86 3y ago
    It shifts the Overton window on what behavior is acceptable, and like the GP said it creates a feedback loop where stores close, prices increase, more people are forced to steal, etc etc. It's pretty widely accepted that lawlessness, even at the "petty" end of the spectrum, is a precursor to larger deterioration of society and whatever civilization/empire you're talking about specifically.
    - denton-scratch 3y ago
      > It's pretty widely accepted that lawlessness, even at the "petty" end of the spectrum, is a precursor to larger deterioration of society and whatever civilization/empire you're talking about specifically. Rudi Giuliani would agree. I wouldn't.
      - pc86 3y ago
        I'm not talking about Rudy, this has been pretty widely discussed and debates for more than half a century.
Jun8 3y ago
Retailers use the equation (inventory in db - what's on shelf) = shrink, which conflates many different types of problems in one. Shrink can happen with errors in dbs and cycle counts, but the large part is due to actual theft. However, theft can take many different forms: * Items "falling off the truck", i.e. you expect 100 units to be delivered to store, only 90 were delivered. Workers rarely check counts while receiving in store backrooms, so retailers think these were stolen from the shelves; * Employees stealing stuff directly, either from the backroom or from the shelves; * Employees working in conjunction with non-employees to steal, e.g. sweethearting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweethearting); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweethearting); * Plain old shoplifting, e.g. somebody swiping a few items from the shelf into their pocket; * Organized Retail Crime (ORC): People coming into the store and brazenly stealing entire shelves or racks of merchandise. The first four has been around since Retail was invented, but their impact is relatively small on a store basis. It is the last item that is the killer and what is referred to as the rise in "shoplifting" recently. This is not shoplifting in the traditional sense at all. As an example, consider Cotopaxi closing their flagship store in SF: https://sgbonline.com/cotopaxi-closes-store-in-san-fransisco-due-to-crime/ https://sgbonline.com/cotopaxi-closes-store-in-san-fransisco... Retailers are very reluctant to deal directly with the problem, i.e. stop the people walking out. The reason is that the usual profile of people engaged in OCR as well as its relation to various progressive causes makes this a taboo subject in the US. This also makes it hard to discuss the problem. Just the other day I heard a segment on NPR saying retail theft has not increased and "statistics are hard to come by". Edit: For those who (rightly) point out the fact that retailers are doing cost benefit analysis and deciding that the bad press is not worth it: consider walking into a bank in California and stealing (without using a weapon, just intimidation) less than $950 (lower than the misdemeanor theft limit for retail) and see if the bank would do a similar analysis.
- yoyohello13 3y ago
  A company would much rather lose some inventory than deal with an employee that was injured or killed trying to stop a thief.
  - Paul-Craft 3y ago
Nifty3929 3y ago
I think the largest part of the problem are actually the 2nd and 3rd order effects of retail theft. The shrinkage itself is only a small part of the cost. Stores might attempt to address theft with preventative measures like locking things up, but this hurts the shopping experience for legitimate shoppers and encourages them to shop elsewhere, reducing sales at that store. And what of the morale of the employees who witness all this? What sorts of employees remain in an environment where they see shop lifting all day? Aside from the inconvenience of asking for the toothpaste cabinet to be unlocked, who wants to shop in a place where low-lifes are wandering around shoplifting in plain sight? Staff shortages lead to messier, less organized stores, with less help and longer lines. Overall this leads to a general degradation of the store, reduced sales, higher turnover, lower employee moral, and eventually closing the store outright in many cases. And it's not fair to focus entirely on what the stores can do - this should be a job for the police and justice system. That's what we pay them for. And we don't allow (and wouldn't want) stores meting out their own justice either. Edit: moral->morale
- dmoy 3y ago
  > And what of the moral of the employees who witness all this? What sorts of employees remain in an environment where they see shop lifting all day? Do you mean morale or moral? The sentence reads a little differently if you actually mean the latter.
Jaepa 3y ago
Its worth mentioning that this is somewhat a manufactured moral panic. The Rite-aid referenced in the article cited shoplifting as the reason for closing but provided no numbers & the numbers of reported shoplifting incidents have been pretty much steady. Its worth mentioning that about a year after this happened the company filed Chapter 11. There is no good data on this, and the data that does exist shows that shoplifting is down from 2019. Its only up it you compare to during the pandemic.
- throwaway626 3y ago
  Michael Hobbes has spent some time debunking the panic articles coming out of mainstream media on this topic. https://x.com/rottenindenmark/status/1596614556448882688 https://x.com/rottenindenmark/status/1596614556448882688 He also covered an article a while back about a Target in (I believe) Brooklyn allegedly closing because of OCR only to reopen three blocks away. Yep, that’s gonna stop the alleged hordes of roving gangs of shoplifters. It’s hard to make any conclusive claims without more evidence, but both retailers and police seem reticent to give any hard numbers.
- gustavus 3y ago
  I mean cities in California have legalized all shoplifting under $900, which is more than most people's grocery bill. But you're right it's just a moral panic by those darned conservatives trying to push their racism and bigotry by demanding that their society have "laws" and rely on outdated ideas like "criminals" instead of realizing the truth that crime is not a societal problem but rather a daring statement by marginalized groups striking back against their vaguely defined "oppressors".
  - Jaepa 3y ago
    No-one legalized it. Prop 47 was meant to reduce shoplifting under 900(950 actually) from a felony to a misdemeanor. This bring is it rough inline with other states such as Texas (at a cap of $2,500) and North Carolina ($1,000). Also please don't put words in my mouth, its distasteful.
    - 3y ago
u-silly-commie 3y ago
[flagged]
- sixothree 3y ago
  Are you referring to poor people or brown people?
  - u-silly-commie 3y ago
    [flagged]
2Gkashmiri 3y ago
Would it be possible to go back to basics and have "smaller shops" instead of multi level shopping industrial complexes that has fuck tone of space and millions of dollars worth of product? In other countries including mine, traditionally there have always been small shops at every corner, each seeking something different and the owner sits there and has help or usually not. The result, the owner or the help get to know their clientele and its a matter of social contract that no one steals from the small shopkeeper. If someone does, the other shopkeepers come to help because its a scratch my back and I will scratch yours.
- psychlops 3y ago
  You are coming dangerously close to questioning globalization.
  - 2Gkashmiri 3y ago
    It works for most of the world so I guess its the problem on your side.
  - Paul-Craft 3y ago
    What's dangerous about it? I'll do it openly, right here. Look, nothing happened.
knallfrosch 3y ago
Incredibly naive solutions offered by the workers: Hire more colleagues and watch all aisles at all times and hire full-time security guards as well. They really don't seem to understand that this costs more money than it prevents thefts. I've followed this with San Francisco, where taking $1,000 worth of items from a store is now de facto allowed. (I won't call it theft anymore because of this.) Target, a retail chain, moved to shorter opening hours there, and only there, to slow the bleeding in 2021 and closes ever more stores. You can see people riding bikes into stores, stuffing a plastic bag full of items and leaving, in full sight of what appears to be a security guard: https://twitter.com/LyanneMelendez/status/1404574079156318210 https://twitter.com/LyanneMelendez/status/140457407915631821... In any case, the market takes care of this: Any population that tolerates this kind of behaviour (whether that's a city jurisdiction, or on the council/state level) will, sooner or later, find its stores closed. Delivery trucks - less attractive targets because of missing information about their wares and whereabouts - will be the next victims.
- TMWNN 3y ago
  >I've followed this with San Francisco, where taking $1,000 worth of items from a store is now de facto allowed. (I won't call it theft anymore because of this.) And of course, already you have people like jaepa say elsewhere that ackshually TX has a higher dollar amount for when shoplifting becomes a felony. TX doesn't have DAs that refuse to prosecute misdemeanor shoplifting charges. CA does. That's the important difference, not so much the dollar amount.
denton-scratch 3y ago
I think the main purpose of store security guards is to protect staff, not goods. And they're more a theatrical deterrent than anything else; at least, the store guards around here are unarmed, over 50, and don't look fit. They seem to spend most of their time doomscrolling on their phone. The fact is, the self-service supermarket retail model is a compromise; a self-service store can sell more goods with less staff, at the cost of "shrinkage". That is, shoplifting is the cost of doing business, and business is still more profitable than the old-fashioned model of keeping goods behind a manned counter.
LanceH 3y ago
> Retailers would rather complain about shoplifting than invest in fighting it. It's amazing how "blame the victim" is either ok or not ok, depending on the victim.
WalterBright 3y ago
> She tries not to take anything from mom-and-pop stores, only big chain retailers. She "tries" not to? > even if that was going to cost them a little more. Hiring more staff is not a "little" more. Staff is very expensive. > a man walked in with a gun ... the robber actually showed more concern for our well-being than my manager or the police did. Threatening people with a gun does not show concern for well-being. (I've been threatened with a gun twice.)
satellite2 3y ago
So Vox is not GDPR compliant? It's the worse joke of a banner I've seen. It says that to opt out of tracking you need to disable cookies at the browser level.
jscipione 3y ago
[flagged]
- dang 3y ago
  Your account has been using HN primarily (exclusively, even?) for political battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of who/what you're battling for/against, so I've banned the account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

48 points by cainxinth 3y ago

Tolerating shoplifting is burning the furniture to keep warm, eating the seeds for the next crop. Stores close, jobs flee, food and medicine deserts grow. Whatever desperation drives people to shoplift, amplifies. I'm watching it happen in real time in my nearest big city. It's a huge slow motion train wreck crushing the people who need help most. To help them we need to be less tolerant of such petty crime, more in proportion to the damage that it does.

philipov 3y ago
To help them, we need to be less tolerant of the white collar crime perpetrated by the employers in our country.
- orochimaaru 3y ago
  How would targeting white collar crime prevent the closure of stores because of safety concerns and store losses? White collar crime needs to be prosecuted. But that won’t help here.
  - xattt 3y ago
    Targeting white collar crime opens up resources for helping the rest of society.
    - orochimaaru 3y ago
      Nope. It doesn’t. Probably goes to a fund managed by the agency that initiated the prosecution. I don’t think any marginalized community sees a single dime out of any white collar crime prosecution.
  - mxkopy 3y ago
    I don't know if you classify misappropriation of government funds, grift, and politically motivated administrative decisions as white collar crime, but that sort of stuff is a large part of the reason for why this sort of thing is culturally acceptable. The Kids for Cash scandal, I think, serves as a good example for why so many people feel disenfranchised - and it's an example of someone with authority in the system getting caught, imagine how many don't.
    - vorpalhex 3y ago
      I don't think 15 year old kids in Chicago are stealing clothes and shoes because of an insider corruption scheme impacting Pennsylvania almost two decades ago.
      - orochimaaru 3y ago
        You forgot to add electronics and video games here. I’m sure those fall under the necessities criteria for teenagers these days. A lot of the crime isn’t just necessities. It’s basically stealing to sell on the side.
        pc86 3y ago
        Absolutely, but the majority of people who are doing that are doing it to buy food and other necessities (or, a step or two removed, to buy drugs to try to sell but for the same end goal - a better life for them and theirs). Yes there are exceptions of course but the people stealing things from Target and CVS are not selling those things to pay for their Mercedes. They're selling them to pay for basic necessities. That doesn't mean it's not a crime, and it shouldn't be punished, but it is a distinction worth noting.
        vorpalhex 3y ago
        Overwhelmingly shoplifters are white kids with substance abuse problems. They are feeding drug/alcohol problems, not feeding their family. The vast majority of the poor in the US are.. obese. Not fat, but clinically obese. For whatever failings we have, feeding the poor and the masses is not one of them. Typically when kids do "go hungry" they are Middleschoolers or younger with... abusive parents. (Which is why free lunch programs work, it bypasses shitty parents).
  - marginalia_nu 3y ago
    White collar crime is part of the engine that creates the poverty that has people shoplifting in the first place. Between the subprime mortgage crisis and hooking 50 million people on OxyContin, this shit really takes a bite out of people's savings.
  - floren 3y ago
    It comes up in every crime discussion -- a poster runs in to point out that actually, wage theft is worse than someone beating and robbing your elderly grandmother.
    - justrealist 3y ago
      They also have to torture the numbers to make the case that it's comparable. The "wage theft" numbers they cite include like, some defense subcontractor suing Lockheed Martin for unpaid hours. It's important that it doesn't happen, but it's just a different order of magnitude of damage for the people sensitive to it.
    - somehnguy 3y ago
      I’ve never seen anyone compare wage theft to violent crime like you’re implying. It’s usually in the context that wage theft is a much larger problem than people realize - to the point that depending on which source you choose it’s either on par or larger than other forms of theft.
      - floren 3y ago
        Searching the archives for "wage theft" turns up examples pretty trivially, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37703395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37703395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37751850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37751850 You're right that they're not saying "wage theft is worse than murder", just "wage theft is worse than all other forms of theft"
        somehnguy 3y ago
        I don’t see any references to physically harming people in your examples. I also don’t believe anyone is implying violent crime when comparing to other types of theft.
      - Paul-Craft 3y ago
        I don't get where you're getting "on par" from. Literally the only year that other forms of theft have exceeded or even come close to wage theft was the year Bernie Madoff got convicted. That's just an accounting artifact.
- owlstuffing 3y ago
  The two are not mutually exclusive.
- arijun 3y ago
  To me this sounds like a “no u” argument. Whataboutism doesn’t address the op’s claim that shoplifting reduces access to stores for those who really need it.
Spivak 3y ago
> To help them we need to be less tolerant of such petty crime ??? Petty crime by any reasonable definition is an inferior good, above a (not actually all that large) income people stop doing it. It's not entirely clear how punishing it harder is actually going to help until you actually help the truly desperate. Now, once you do and the only people left shoplifting have no claim to any kind of "well I had to because I couldn't afford <necessity>" then you can bring the wrath of god down on it.
- stewx 3y ago
  No one has to steal, and it's insulting to honorable low-income people to claim otherwise.
  - feintruled 3y ago
    You sure the social safety net is that good?
    - throwawa14223 3y ago
      No safety net is require to say stealing is immoral.
      - feintruled 3y ago
        I didn't mention the morality of it. The statement was 'no one HAS to steal' so I was taking it as a statement that no-one will starve without stealing which must surely be a comment on the social safety net. My three assumptions here are that some people are starving, stealing to eat is the canonical excusable crime, and that 'just get a job' is not a solution. If you disagree with any of those, then that's your opinion but we have nothing further to discuss as we start from a different premise.
        throwawa14223 3y ago
        >stealing to eat is the canonical excusable crime You're absolutely correct, we disagree on premises about the world. Have a wonderful day, I'm sorry for what amounts to a nonsensical response on my part.
justrealist 3y ago
It's not desperation! It's organized crime reselling on Amazon and Ebay! Target is't losing money because people are stealing gallons of milk they actually consume, it's because organized gangs empty the entire shelf of laundry detergent and flip it online. The romanticism here is ridiculous.
- idiotsecant 3y ago
  Happy, well adjusted people don't form organized shoplifting gangs. You do that when you fall down the rabbit hole of not having other options. If we do our job of educating and providing very basic social services and opportunities for young people it turns out that crime rates get lower and we get to harness the collective human potential of a generation instead of paying to lock them up. Unfortunately we have to rely on the better nature and responsible long term planning abilities of humans to get this done. One human might be able to stick to a plan that becomes impossible for 5.
  - justrealist 3y ago
    > Happy, well adjusted people don't form organized shoplifting gangs Happy and well adjusted people form shoplifting gangs with the risk/reward calculus says that they can make a lot of money with 0 risk! "Don't shoplift" is not some innate ethical virtue that humans adopt when they are happy and healthy; by trying to lean on virtues without maintaining a system for enforcing them you are simply spending down unquantifiable social capital in order to avoid making hard decisions.
    - idiotsecant 3y ago
      I think you're wrong. Most people aren't kept from stealing because they're afraid they'll get in trouble. They are kept from stealing by an innate sense of social fairness. If you meet a man on the road in the middle of a remote forest in which you cannot possibly be observed do you murder him and take his things or not? If not, why not?
      - 3y ago
gustavus 3y ago
> Whatever desperation drives people to shoplift, amplifies. We need to keep in mind most of this shoplifting is not out of desperation or people needing things in most cases. Despite what people like to complain the US does have some social programs and beyond that almost every major city I've been in has multiple food banks and other organizations that help with people in extreme need. I'm not saying they are perfectly adequate, and I'm not trying to be scroogesque by saying "are there not workhouses or prisons?", merely to point out that first off there are lots of people that are desperate that don't turn to retail theft. In order to frame the real root of the problem. It's organized crime. Here's how the scam works, there are various drug addicts, they will do anything for their next fix, they are the ones performing the actual theft. They then sell what they steal to the middle managers who will give them money or drugs for the merchandise. The middle managers then turn around and deliver it to what I'll call "HQ" which then turns around and sales it online, and they are able to underbid their competitors by virtue of having very low operating costs. There was a wonderful article about how this scam was being run with a baby food ring operating out of Florida, but it is a similar story in multiple areas. I put this out there to disabuse some people of the seemingly naive notion that these poor shoplifters are noble "Jean ValJean" types trying to steal bread to feed their family, and the truth that many of them, although held captive in the throes of addiction and mental health crises, are cogs in a machine of organized crime which although viewed microscopically doesn't seem like a big deal, when expanded up cause true societal destabilization.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  Yes. I would guess that most drug dealers take more payments in stolen merch than they do in cold, hard cash.
drewcoo 3y ago
If people are burning the furniture to keep warm, cracking down more harshly on furniture burning probably doesn't make the people less desperate for heat to live. If people are desperate enough to eat the seed they know they need for the next crop, policing seed use more strictly won't make the people less desperate for food. In fact, it probably makes them more desperate. Why would you think being less tolerant of shoplifting would make the people less desperate?
WalterBright 3y ago
> Whatever desperation drives people to shoplift That assumes they are desperate, and not just find it easier to steal than to work.
- scoofy 3y ago
  It’s a two tiered system. I live in SF, and when I see a man grab a rack of jackets at target and walk out, it’s obvious the act of a desperate and drug addled individual. When I see an efficient group of people in a Lexus breaking into cars or luxury stores, or the groups reselling fenced merchandise on 24th and Mission, it’s obviously organized crime. The one fuels the other. There’s little reason for a desperate man to steal 10 jackets (he only needs one or two), unless there is a fence willing to buy them. There’s little reason for organized crime to break into cars or shops when others are willing to do that work for them, they can focus on selling the goods on Facebook Marketplace or eBay.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  The truth is weirder than that. In sections of society it is frowned upon to have paid employment. It is seen as being a loser. A decent percentage of shoplifting is done by those with drug addictions, but a bigger percentage is done by those who are not desperate or in need, but simply because it is seen as the respectable way to earn money. Source: I am a criminal and have spent a serious portion of my adult life in custody
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Thanks for the frankness. I went to Caltech, perhaps the university with the most extensive honor system. It was wonderful. I never had to watch my back, or lock my dorm room door. The rest of the students liked it, too, and we watched out for each other. I don't know of any student who stole, but surely it did happen. Their fellow students would turn them in and ostracize them, so they usually just disappeared. It's the way I want to live. I've tried to use that in my life ever since. Sometimes, I get taken advantage of. But usually, I've found that people reciprocate, and it's nice. The D Language Foundation is run that way. We like it. (In contrast, a friend of mine attended a different university. His second day, his dorm room was looted clean.)
trinsic2 3y ago
I agree. And, we need to be more aware and action orientated towards our judicial systems to enforce the law and making sure people get treatment/help. I think this should probably start with our police and judicial systems
ip26 3y ago
Just a few weeks ago, NPR did a segment on how reducing traffic enforcement (because it disproportionately impacts minorities and the poor) has significantly increased the number of people hit and killed by cars… mostly minorities and the poor.

Ajay-p 3y ago

I am sympathetic to a person stealing food or clothing but not iPhones and consumer products, but theft appears unsustainable for retailers. What is the answer to this problem? Options are: a. More prosecutions and stronger enforcement of existing laws; b. Greater security within the store environment; or c. Closing the stores in areas with high crime. The last option would not be productive for the community. Option B has its limitations such as profiling, potential hostile encounters, and civil liability for America retailers. I do not know what it was like for shoplifters a decade ago but one person has told me it was more stringent. Shoplifters were prosecuted and punished, therefore it is possible that the only solution is greater enforcement of the law, and aggressive prosecutions.

tasty_freeze 3y ago
Don't take this as me defending the shoplifters, but I don't think the smash-and-grab iphone thieves are doing it because they want dozens of phones. They are fencing them and use the money, which can buy food (and of course anything else).
- vharuck 3y ago
  This matches my brief experience. When I worked at a Lowe's store, which was a big target for serial shoplifters, the security staff said the process usually went like this: 1. Steal a small but expensive item, usually by hiding it in another item's box (return the big one later for a refund). 2. Return the stolen item at a different Lowe's, or even Home Depot. Without a receipt, you'll get a gift card with the item's value. 3. Sell the gift card at a discount, either online or to somebody in the parking lot. I don't remember any problems with people stealing the basic things every good toolset should have, like hammers or drills. It was a lot of drill bits and attachments.
- vorpalhex 3y ago
  Mostly drugs and alcohol. There is huge overlap between shoplifting and substance abuse. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4104590/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4104590/
- 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

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impostervt 3y ago

My local grocery store chain (Giant) recently closed off 1 of the two main openings to every store, and the self-checkout is now very annoying about "put the item in the bagging area". All of their solutions seem to be very anti-consumer, to the point where I now use instacart instead of going myself. I've also started ordering from a different grocery store. I wish they'd just hire an off-duty police officer some of the time.

CivBase 3y ago
Better yet they could hire cashiers. When self-checkout stations were introduced at my local grocier, they were a convenient way to checkout fast when you only had a few simple items. It was always a user-hostile experience, but it wasn't a big deal when you only had a few items. Now there are so few cashiers ever available that I'm regularly forced to use self checkout with a few dozen items. And the experience has only gotten worse.
nfriedly 3y ago
> I wish they'd just hire an off-duty police officer some of the time. Same, but that's expensive and these stores often operate on very thin margins. I worked at a k-mart when I was a teenager, 20-something years ago. The store had a problem with shoplifting and did hire a security guy to come in. He got some arrests for "petty" shoplifting, but it took something like a year to nail the big one. It turned out that the employee who had installed the cameras had been doing a ton of shoplifting. They eventually caught him because he made a mistake and did something on-camera. That solved the shoplifting problem, but the security guy probably cost more than they saved. At any rate, the store closed down a year or two later.
- sixothree 3y ago
  If the expense of hiring a few employees is greater than the cost of the loss from theft, then how big of a problem is this really?

ObnoxiousProxy 3y ago

Truthfully, the proliferation of crimes like this is a pre-condition of systems collapse because it slowly unravels a lawful society. Laws that are not enforced are useless, and behaviour like this would eventually permeate into mainstream culture. After all, why should I pay if others can steal without consequences? Not to mention the negative socioeconomic impacts others have already pointed out of forcing store closures or driving up costs which eventually just feed the loop. Whether or not one is sympathetic towards the people practicing this, the key issue that is becoming apparent is increasing apathy towards basic civilizational social contracts. This will be bad for everyone in the long term.

reidjs 3y ago
Agree that it's bad people steal, but disagree that petty theft will slowly cause the collapse of our modern lawful society.
- pc86 3y ago
  It shifts the Overton window on what behavior is acceptable, and like the GP said it creates a feedback loop where stores close, prices increase, more people are forced to steal, etc etc. It's pretty widely accepted that lawlessness, even at the "petty" end of the spectrum, is a precursor to larger deterioration of society and whatever civilization/empire you're talking about specifically.
  - denton-scratch 3y ago
    > It's pretty widely accepted that lawlessness, even at the "petty" end of the spectrum, is a precursor to larger deterioration of society and whatever civilization/empire you're talking about specifically. Rudi Giuliani would agree. I wouldn't.
    - pc86 3y ago
      I'm not talking about Rudy, this has been pretty widely discussed and debates for more than half a century.

Jun8 3y ago

Retailers use the equation (inventory in db - what's on shelf) = shrink, which conflates many different types of problems in one. Shrink can happen with errors in dbs and cycle counts, but the large part is due to actual theft. However, theft can take many different forms: * Items "falling off the truck", i.e. you expect 100 units to be delivered to store, only 90 were delivered. Workers rarely check counts while receiving in store backrooms, so retailers think these were stolen from the shelves; * Employees stealing stuff directly, either from the backroom or from the shelves; * Employees working in conjunction with non-employees to steal, e.g. sweethearting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweethearting); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweethearting); * Plain old shoplifting, e.g. somebody swiping a few items from the shelf into their pocket; * Organized Retail Crime (ORC): People coming into the store and brazenly stealing entire shelves or racks of merchandise. The first four has been around since Retail was invented, but their impact is relatively small on a store basis. It is the last item that is the killer and what is referred to as the rise in "shoplifting" recently. This is not shoplifting in the traditional sense at all. As an example, consider Cotopaxi closing their flagship store in SF: https://sgbonline.com/cotopaxi-closes-store-in-san-fransisco-due-to-crime/ https://sgbonline.com/cotopaxi-closes-store-in-san-fransisco... Retailers are very reluctant to deal directly with the problem, i.e. stop the people walking out. The reason is that the usual profile of people engaged in OCR as well as its relation to various progressive causes makes this a taboo subject in the US. This also makes it hard to discuss the problem. Just the other day I heard a segment on NPR saying retail theft has not increased and "statistics are hard to come by". Edit: For those who (rightly) point out the fact that retailers are doing cost benefit analysis and deciding that the bad press is not worth it: consider walking into a bank in California and stealing (without using a weapon, just intimidation) less than $950 (lower than the misdemeanor theft limit for retail) and see if the bank would do a similar analysis.

yoyohello13 3y ago
A company would much rather lose some inventory than deal with an employee that was injured or killed trying to stop a thief.
- Paul-Craft 3y ago

Nifty3929 3y ago

I think the largest part of the problem are actually the 2nd and 3rd order effects of retail theft. The shrinkage itself is only a small part of the cost. Stores might attempt to address theft with preventative measures like locking things up, but this hurts the shopping experience for legitimate shoppers and encourages them to shop elsewhere, reducing sales at that store. And what of the morale of the employees who witness all this? What sorts of employees remain in an environment where they see shop lifting all day? Aside from the inconvenience of asking for the toothpaste cabinet to be unlocked, who wants to shop in a place where low-lifes are wandering around shoplifting in plain sight? Staff shortages lead to messier, less organized stores, with less help and longer lines. Overall this leads to a general degradation of the store, reduced sales, higher turnover, lower employee moral, and eventually closing the store outright in many cases. And it's not fair to focus entirely on what the stores can do - this should be a job for the police and justice system. That's what we pay them for. And we don't allow (and wouldn't want) stores meting out their own justice either. Edit: moral->morale

dmoy 3y ago
> And what of the moral of the employees who witness all this? What sorts of employees remain in an environment where they see shop lifting all day? Do you mean morale or moral? The sentence reads a little differently if you actually mean the latter.

Jaepa 3y ago

Its worth mentioning that this is somewhat a manufactured moral panic. The Rite-aid referenced in the article cited shoplifting as the reason for closing but provided no numbers & the numbers of reported shoplifting incidents have been pretty much steady. Its worth mentioning that about a year after this happened the company filed Chapter 11. There is no good data on this, and the data that does exist shows that shoplifting is down from 2019. Its only up it you compare to during the pandemic.

throwaway626 3y ago
Michael Hobbes has spent some time debunking the panic articles coming out of mainstream media on this topic. https://x.com/rottenindenmark/status/1596614556448882688 https://x.com/rottenindenmark/status/1596614556448882688 He also covered an article a while back about a Target in (I believe) Brooklyn allegedly closing because of OCR only to reopen three blocks away. Yep, that’s gonna stop the alleged hordes of roving gangs of shoplifters. It’s hard to make any conclusive claims without more evidence, but both retailers and police seem reticent to give any hard numbers.
gustavus 3y ago
I mean cities in California have legalized all shoplifting under $900, which is more than most people's grocery bill. But you're right it's just a moral panic by those darned conservatives trying to push their racism and bigotry by demanding that their society have "laws" and rely on outdated ideas like "criminals" instead of realizing the truth that crime is not a societal problem but rather a daring statement by marginalized groups striking back against their vaguely defined "oppressors".
- Jaepa 3y ago
  No-one legalized it. Prop 47 was meant to reduce shoplifting under 900(950 actually) from a felony to a misdemeanor. This bring is it rough inline with other states such as Texas (at a cap of $2,500) and North Carolina ($1,000). Also please don't put words in my mouth, its distasteful.
  - 3y ago

u-silly-commie 3y ago

[flagged]

sixothree 3y ago
Are you referring to poor people or brown people?
- u-silly-commie 3y ago
  [flagged]

2Gkashmiri 3y ago

Would it be possible to go back to basics and have "smaller shops" instead of multi level shopping industrial complexes that has fuck tone of space and millions of dollars worth of product? In other countries including mine, traditionally there have always been small shops at every corner, each seeking something different and the owner sits there and has help or usually not. The result, the owner or the help get to know their clientele and its a matter of social contract that no one steals from the small shopkeeper. If someone does, the other shopkeepers come to help because its a scratch my back and I will scratch yours.

psychlops 3y ago
You are coming dangerously close to questioning globalization.
- 2Gkashmiri 3y ago
  It works for most of the world so I guess its the problem on your side.
- Paul-Craft 3y ago
  What's dangerous about it? I'll do it openly, right here. Look, nothing happened.

knallfrosch 3y ago

Incredibly naive solutions offered by the workers: Hire more colleagues and watch all aisles at all times and hire full-time security guards as well. They really don't seem to understand that this costs more money than it prevents thefts. I've followed this with San Francisco, where taking $1,000 worth of items from a store is now de facto allowed. (I won't call it theft anymore because of this.) Target, a retail chain, moved to shorter opening hours there, and only there, to slow the bleeding in 2021 and closes ever more stores. You can see people riding bikes into stores, stuffing a plastic bag full of items and leaving, in full sight of what appears to be a security guard: https://twitter.com/LyanneMelendez/status/1404574079156318210 https://twitter.com/LyanneMelendez/status/140457407915631821... In any case, the market takes care of this: Any population that tolerates this kind of behaviour (whether that's a city jurisdiction, or on the council/state level) will, sooner or later, find its stores closed. Delivery trucks - less attractive targets because of missing information about their wares and whereabouts - will be the next victims.

TMWNN 3y ago
>I've followed this with San Francisco, where taking $1,000 worth of items from a store is now de facto allowed. (I won't call it theft anymore because of this.) And of course, already you have people like jaepa say elsewhere that ackshually TX has a higher dollar amount for when shoplifting becomes a felony. TX doesn't have DAs that refuse to prosecute misdemeanor shoplifting charges. CA does. That's the important difference, not so much the dollar amount.

denton-scratch 3y ago

I think the main purpose of store security guards is to protect staff, not goods. And they're more a theatrical deterrent than anything else; at least, the store guards around here are unarmed, over 50, and don't look fit. They seem to spend most of their time doomscrolling on their phone. The fact is, the self-service supermarket retail model is a compromise; a self-service store can sell more goods with less staff, at the cost of "shrinkage". That is, shoplifting is the cost of doing business, and business is still more profitable than the old-fashioned model of keeping goods behind a manned counter.

LanceH 3y ago

> Retailers would rather complain about shoplifting than invest in fighting it. It's amazing how "blame the victim" is either ok or not ok, depending on the victim.

WalterBright 3y ago

> She tries not to take anything from mom-and-pop stores, only big chain retailers. She "tries" not to? > even if that was going to cost them a little more. Hiring more staff is not a "little" more. Staff is very expensive. > a man walked in with a gun ... the robber actually showed more concern for our well-being than my manager or the police did. Threatening people with a gun does not show concern for well-being. (I've been threatened with a gun twice.)

satellite2 3y ago

So Vox is not GDPR compliant? It's the worse joke of a banner I've seen. It says that to opt out of tracking you need to disable cookies at the browser level.

jscipione 3y ago

[flagged]

dang 3y ago
Your account has been using HN primarily (exclusively, even?) for political battle. That's not allowed here, regardless of who/what you're battling for/against, so I've banned the account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.